Archive for December, 2014

It has always been important to Laura and I that our Children learn to swim and have water confidence. Both of us had swimming lessons as children and see it as an important skill. As a child I remember going swimming with school every Friday morning (this must have been a logistical nightmare as it was a 6 mile round trip and they had some form of system going that involved all 250 children using one bus getting there and back over the course of a morning) and my parents took me and my brother every Sunday afternoon. I have always regretted that I stopped swimming at 11 when I left Primary school, after this point i would get about 6 lessons a year at high school which was mad as we had a pool on site. However it was also at 11 that i started to wear glasses all the time, I found it difficult to give up my sight to swim so I gave up swimming instead.

However this is about my children, Charlie and Rosa both started swimming before they were 6 months old and they have both swum once a week since this point. We started in a class of about 6 and Laura goes in the water with them and they have loved splashing in the water, diving underneath and being with the other children. Once Charlie was 3 and when Rosa was two and a half they move to one to one tuition with a great swimming instructor.

Now I haven’t had much opportunity to watch my children swim as I am always at work when they have their lessons, so I only see them when we go to play in the pool on weekends, this however changed when Charlie went to school. We had to move his lesson into the evening which meant I could take him. So for the last couple of months I’ve seen lots of his lessons. I’ve found watching his lessons a mixture of frustration and pride. I don’t always understand his swimming teachers techniques I often get frustrated that he doesn’t do long distances in the pool as often he only does 2-4m at a time. This is because there is always something more to work on.

However this evening Charlie had an assessment and i have never been as proud of him as I was today. The long weeks of correcting techniques and short distances culminated in 10 meters of brilliant front crawl, 10 of back stroke and 3m of breast stroke. I was so impressed with his determination and concentration. I do not see this side of Charlie very often. I believe that the concentration he has learnt is being used in school, providing a good basis for learning. He knows that by trying over and over he will succeed.

I look forward to his lessons and can’t wait to see what he achieves next!